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Something happened to me recently that got me thinking. Exactly how it happened is a long and torturous story. Its what happened that counts: I lost Internet access for a week thanks to the whim of a network administrator.
This has very serious implications not only on the micro-scale of my personal day-to-day communication but on the macro-scale of Netizens' rights. I was prevented on looking at the equivalent of my daily newspaper which for me is HotWired. I was in the middle of a fascinating discussion that was important to me on Threads. I was also negotiating work for next year, expecting some contributions for j-dom and more via e-mail. I could no longer do this. Nobody in a democratic, free country would expect their right to receive postal mail to be removed, especially by the postman. Yet propeller heads with no knowledge of the rights implications, empowered only by their geeky hold of the servers have the ability to cut the most powerful communications medium known to mankind from us.
They say you don't know what you've got till you've lost it. Too right. The whole thing is unjustifiable and done by someone who legally shouldn't have the ability to remove such a fundamental right as the right to communicate. Something needs to be done AND FAST!
